Due to the complex nature of their products, chemical manufacturers face a number of unique difficulties when installing liquid filling machines. Chemicals can be corrosive or flammable in nature, meaning manufacturers have to meet stringent health and safety requirements. The industry often uses bulk containers, which often need specialised filling machinery.
While liquid filling technology is useful to chemical businesses of all sizes, they need to make sure that equipment fulfils all these industry-specific requirements. Filling machines must cope with a range of liquids, with different characteristics and viscosities, while filling quickly and accurately.
Why do chemical manufacturers need special machines?
Liquid filling technology can bring a number of benefits to chemical manufacturers. These systems allow them to fill products much more efficiently and at high speeds, meeting rising demands. To add to the benefits, improved productivity lowers labour costs and allows companies to deploy resources elsewhere. In the chemical sector, growing domestic and global competition means companies have to produce more for less, all without compromising on quality.
What problems do chemicals pose for liquid filling?
The chemical industry covers a wide array of products, from household cleaning products to agrochemicals. One thing that chemicals have in common is that they can be difficult to work with, requiring enhanced health and safety requirements. Chemicals can be corrosive, flammable, or highly reactive. They can be carcinogenic or give off toxic fumes that place staff at risk, while spilled chemicals can attack the machine, corroding components and stopping it from working.
Another issue for the chemical industry is that it often deals with large volumes and bulk containers, which many liquid filling machines simply cannot handle. In addition, many companies work with a variety of different products, each requiring a different size and shape of container or a different nozzle type.
Chemicals can also be of varying viscosities and compositions, from thin liquids to suspensions and pastes. To make things even more difficult, the same liquid can vary in its characteristics according to temperature, humidity, and other environmental factors. A liquid filling machine used in these harsh conditions needs to cope with these problems.
What do you need to consider when choosing a machine?
While the above difficulties mean that companies working with chemicals have to be much more selective, plenty of machines are up to the task. If you are looking for a machine, here are a few things to consider.
Durability
A liquid filling machine should be made of highly durable, relatively inert materials, such as high-grade stainless steel and chemical-resistant plastics. A good machine meets exacting manufacturing standards, making it durable and able to cope with anything. In addition, a good machine fills containers without spilling, which reduces product wastage and lowers health and safety risks.
Flexibility and scalability
When looking for a liquid filling machine, assess your company’s present and future requirements with respect to container shape and sizes. If your business deals with many different product lines, a machine that is relatively easy to reconfigure prevents a lot of downtime. Operators should face few difficulties when setting up the machine to suit different viscosities, and it should cope with suspensions and hot and cold liquids.
This flexibility, if needed, also stretches to meet changing demands. If your business tends to have peaks and troughs, some machines provide easy scalability. They allow you to increase the number of heads and fill more quickly, boosting efficiency. Some vendors even allow you to hire additional heads, boosting capacity when most needed.
Accuracy
Another checklist item is accuracy because a machine should be able to administer exactly the right amount of product. Too much and this wastage adds up and eats into profits, as well as potentially spilling liquids everywhere. Conversely, if the machine underfills, you risk losing customers and attracting the attention of trading standards.
Health and safety
One of the most important factors for the chemical industry is making sure that machines fulfil all health and safety requirements. They should be easy to clean and avoid spills, preventing any corrosion and cross-contamination between different products.
Easy to use
Machines should be very easy to use, with minimal training required for safe operation, and incorporate user-friendly intuitive interfaces that can cope with the harsh environment. They need to be easy to maintain and keep in optimum working order, and easy to fix if something goes wrong. If a production line grinds to a halt, businesses cannot afford long waits for technicians or face long lead times for replacement parts.
How Asset Packaging liquid filling machines overcome these problems
Asset Packaging Machines’ products have a long history of working with chemical manufacturers to build reliable and accurate machines. Built to exacting standards from inert, corrosion-resistant components, including high-grade stainless steel, our liquid filling machines follow all relevant Australian standards. This attention to detail ensures that our machines shrug off the tough conditions posed by the chemical industry. With high accuracy and consistent filling, these machines have helped countless businesses boost production and increase profits.
Able to cope with large containers, and easy to integrate with other equipment, Asset Packaging Machines’ equipment copes with a wide array of liquid characteristics. Whether your business works with thick pastes, thin solutions, or high viscosity liquids, our piston-driven, volumetric filling systems are up to the task. Furthermore, if demand changes, it is easy to add more heads, even hiring from us to cope with seasonal peaks.
Our products are easy to use, and we ensure that you have the training materials you need, with our excellent, responsive customer support never far away. They are easy to use, clean, and maintain, and we have technicians around the Greater Sydney Region ready to offer help whenever and wherever you need.
Asset Packaging Machines has been around for four decades, and we have a deep understanding of the chemical industry and its unique requirements. Our record covers chemical companies of all sizes who have come to trust our technicians and machines. If you want to tap into our expertise and expand your business potential, visit us or call us on (02) 9958 2883.
